"Du vet, de kommer till området och de tror att de äger oss." : En kvalitativ intervjustudie om ungdomars tillit till polisväsendet i ett utsatt område.

Sammanfattning: This study aims to analyse the trust and distrust towards the police by the youth community in a vulnerable district. Previous research has shown that young people are subjected to involuntary police search and are automatically seen as suspects by the police, contributing to the increasing distrust towards the police force and other authorities within law enforcement. A qualitative study was used to examine the trust and distrust in targeted vulnerable areas, along with interviews from nine people residing in a vulnerable district in southern Sweden between the ages of 16-24. The analytical and theoretical framework was centred around Goffman’s notion of ‘stigmatisation’ and Skegg’s theory about respectability, which enabled the analytical focus on what is happening in the interaction with the police.     The study’s empirical data showed that the encounter with police has a crucial part in the trust and distrust within the young community in a vulnerable district towards the police. A specific strategy appears to stand out in which the young people are avoiding the police. It is a strategy where young people take actions independently rather than call the police for ongoing or witnessed crimes. The study also showed that the police’s encounter with the youth in a vulnerable district is much tougher than the police encounter in a less vulnerable area. A clear pattern in the analysis appeared to distinguish how the youth in vulnerable and targeted areas were criminalised by the police and subjected to an involuntary police search, which was considered discriminating and derogatory by the youth subjected to it. An explanation was that a vulnerable area featured criminality and has a low socioeconomic status, which made all the young people suspects in these areas because of the work on crime prevention by the law enforcement. A respectful treatment by the police is essential to build and strengthen the trust towards them by the young people. Furthermore, the findings showed that the police’s work is deemed to be ineffective and inefficient, which is something mentioned by the majority of the interviewees. An important conclusion in this study is that the trust towards the police by the majority of the youth is practically non-existent.